New Delhi: To tone up the bureaucratic apparatus and weed out officials of doubtful integrity and efficiency, the government has asked all its departments to identify such central government employees and move proposals for their premature retirement.

Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha

The move by the Department of Personnel and Training follows a meeting chaired by Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha recently on mechanisms to be adopted to ensure probity among government servants.

The departments have been asked to invoke provisions of Fundamental Rule 56(J) to compulsorily retire such officials.

Under FR 56(J), the government has the “absolute right” to retire, if necessary in public interest, any Group A and B employee, who has joined service before the age of 35 and has crossed the age of 50.

Under the rules, a C Group government servant, who has crossed the age of 55 can be retired prematurely but action can be taken only if the official is suspected to be corrupt or ineffective.

Group A comprise officers of All India Services like IAS, IPS, Indian Forest Service, IRS, while Group B consists of gazetted & non-gazetted officers and Group C clerical and ministerial staff.

However, action can be taken only against such officers whose annual increment have stood frozen for a few years and have not got promotion in preceding five years.

The meeting emphasised rotation of officers on sensitive and non-sensitive posts and their review and screening under FR 56(J).

The DoPT has been asked to monitor implementation and obtain compliance from all ministries in this regard.

“As this activity is to be completed in a time bound manner, it is requested that priority attention may be paid to it and inputs sent to the internal vigilance section at the very earliest,” the notice, sent to all ministries, said.

The Cabinet Secretariat has been issuing such orders from time to time. In February 2012, the UPA government notified a rule making it compulsory for IAS, IPS and officers from other all-India services to retire in “public interest” if they fail to clear a review after 15 years of service.